As an 8-year-old, Dr. James Barton filled a gallon mayonnaise jar with 40 writhing garter snakes.
Ever since, the Sugar House veterinarian has had a distinct love for unusual pets. Barton, who specializes in exotic and geriatric animals, has treated hedgehogs, snakes, turtles, lizards, raccoons, gerbils, ferrets, pot-bellied pigs and rabbits.He's treated a monkey, de-scented a skunk and vaccinated a family's pet bobcat. He's also seen plenty of cats and dogs.
Right now, Barton, who as a boy in New Mexico collected toads and frogs from his basement window, has his own personal menagerie. He, his wife and seven kids have two dogs, two cats, 10 rabbits, a tortoise and a red-tail Colombian boa.
Of all the exotic pets, Barton says, the house bunny is the most practical. Hedgehogs and pot-bellied pigs are a little too offish. But rabbits, which can be litter-box trained, are both smart and cuddly.
Barton, who often adopts abandoned bunnies, is one of a few veterinarians who specialize in rab-bits.
The 46-year-old vet, who moved his practice this February from All About Pets in Holladay to Sugar House Veterinary Hospital, also adopts reptiles. Cy, his 4-foot red-tail Colombian boa, is an escape artist who ran away from home.
Unable to contact the snake's owners, Barton took her in, only to have Cy escape from her pen in the animal hospital. The boa spent seven months hiding out in the warm coils of the hospital's refrigerator.
Barton has had other more alarming escapades with snakes. Once one of his technicians was attacked by a 14-foot python named Emma. The python mistook the technician's white sock, revealed by his Birkenstock sandals, for a white rabbit. She latched onto his ankle and flipped her long body around his leg. It took three people to wrestle the snake off the victim's leg.
They had to use a spatula to pry the python's teeth out of his skin.
Although Barton, who got his master's degree in paleontology from Brigham Young University, enjoys treating exotic pets, the doctor's real love is animal geriatrics.
By the time pets have reached elderly status (older than 7 years old for cats and dogs), they have developed a strong relationship with their owners. "Anything I can do to extend the time they have to share that bond is worthwhile," Barton says.
"I like to see them get extra months, extra days and sometimes extra years."
One recent Friday afternoon, Barton checked on a 10-year-old Samoyed dog named Romeo, who had burned his paws by running on fertilizer or salt. After talking to Romeo's owners, Barton knelt down by the dog, talking to him in soothing tones.
"Dr. Barton's great and the animals love him," says Kathleen Sevastopalos, Romeo's owner who followed Barton's move from Holladay to Sugar House. "He's the most honest doctor, and they can tell you a lot of crazy things because you don't know what's going on, because animals don't talk."
As for Barton, he thrives on seeing the sensitive side pets bring out in people. Once working as a military veterinarian, he had to put to sleep the dog of a lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps. After ordering all the other officers out of the room, the middle-age lieutenant colonel cried like a 14-year-old.
Likewise, pets also become very attached to their owners.